How to get rid of Pandora's raunchy advertisements

I love listening to music on Pandora's free internet radio. Unfortunately, Pandora has also been playing raunchy ads for me lately. I did some searching and found that there are ways you can affect this. Pandora's ads are targeted, so the registration data you provide has an effect on what ads you see and hear.

Suggestions if you don't like the ads you see:

1. Change your age in the account settings: Click the 'account' link in the upper right corner of the Pandora home page. Then put in a year that makes you appear to be under 18 or over 60. Under 18 will get rid of all ads for liquor, and other adult products as well as the more risqué fashion and fragrance ads. Over 60 won't lose the liquor ads but most everything else will be pretty sedate.
   
   
2. While you're there under your "account settings" page you can also enable the Explicit Content Filter
   
   
3. You can also upgrade to Pandora One at a very modest $36/year to cut out the advertising altogether. You can find the 'upgrade' option in the upper right hand corner of the main page. You can find out more about Pandora One here

I've just changed the settings on my Pandora account today. We'll see how well it works.

Is Cloud Computing finally useful?

The technology landscape is filled with examples of things that are great ideas, but when first introduced were a bit ahead of their time, and as such, failed to be embraced by the marketplace.

Hosted applications (often referred to as “Cloud Computing”) is one such example. I remember in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s when “Application Service Provider” was the buzzword of the day. In many cases, it meant the same thing as vendors mean today when they say theirs is a Cloud Computing application… the hosted application is maintained in the provider’s datacenter. Google Apps is one such example. What made the ASP craze of the 2000’s less than successful was that it had deal with the limited internet connectivity of the day. I still remember dial-up internet, and leaving my PC online all night to download just a few megabytes of music from Napster. (Yes, I now realize it was wrong to download music without paying for it, and I erased all my pirated downloads long ago… but that’s a different topic entirely.) Why would anyone want to make an application only accessible through that type of internet connection? People decided they would much rather download their data (email, word docs, etc) to the local PC, where I can be sure it’s always quickly available.

A couple years ago, I stopped using Microsoft Outlook (a traditional application that’s designed to download data to the local PC) and switched entirely to using the web interface of Google Apps (a “cloud application” that’s designed to leave data on the server). It was hard at first. I had to re-train some of my thinking about how the app should work, and re-learn some of my long-ago-memorized keyboard shortcuts before using Gmail was as quick as using Outlook for me. But the switch paid off, and pretty soon I was saying “Why didn’t I do this sooner? Why doesn’t everybody do this?”. I haven’t worried about backing up my email, or archiving the old data in my PST file, emptying my deleted items folder, or de-duplicating my email for years, despite the fact that I help clients do these things regularly.

Another example: I was browsing the internet on my phone the other day, and it suddenly occurred to me how incredibly useful it was. Sure, it’s slightly slower than the serious web browsing I do with my laptop. But almost anything I want to do online could be done from my phone. Which is really nice when I’m away from my desk and need to send an email, file a trouble ticket for a customer, download and listen to the MP3 of a webinar I missed, or download the latest episode of a podcast while I’m stuck in traffic.

The first internet-connected phone I purchased was in the year 2000, but it was far from useful. What took so long? My take is that the idea was ahead of the infrastructure that was needed to support it. The browser on that phone was so primitive, and the connection speed through the cell phone company so slow that while it was a great concept, it was completely useless. I returned the phone within a month.

For those of us who occasionally ponder that “computers haven’t really changed in the last 10 years”, we shouldn’t forget that while most of the ideas are the same as 10 or even 20 years ago, many of them are becoming useful for the first time. Years ago they were just good concepts, but lousy products. That’s definite progress.

Why I'm Keeping My iPhone

All too frequently, I get caught up in the excitement when a new tech toy is released. I recently had the privilege of carrying Google's new Nexus One. While the Android platform definitely shows promise, I wrote down a list of "cons" that caused me to be so glad the experiment was over and I got to return to using my iPhone 3GS:

• "jumpy" navigation. Most of the time, everything works fine, but doesn't seem to be quite as "smooth" as the iPhone experience. Occasionally you'll have to press a button 4 times (possibly due to the lack of multitouch?)
  
• Behavior isn't always consistent. Example: 10 minutes into a phone call, the phone REFUSED to open the home screen, until I had ended the call. It's supposed to background the phone app when I press the home button, but it didn't this time. I tried for about a minute before giving up. Simultaneously, it also kept turning the screen off after 2-3 seconds of inactivity, while I was trying to figure out why the phone app wouldn't background as usual
  
• No bluetooth voice dialing or searching. Minor, but I say "call john doe" or "play music by coldplay" from my bluetooth headset all the time with my iPhone.
  
• Confusing array of search options. (Do I search in the Voice Dialer? In the Google widget? In the browser?) My iPhone has a nice, unified search in the home screen. I kept saying "Navigate to such and such address" only to have it do a google search on the topic instead of pulling up the navigation app.
  
• Bluetooth works unreliably. I'll answer a call, bluetooth is on. The caller doesn't hear me, and I don't hear them, either on the handset OR the bluetooth earpiece. Very bad. (I'm using a Jawbone JB2 headset.)
  
• Speakerphone isn't up to par with the iphone speakerphone quality. Minor point, but I do occasionally use the speakerphone on my iPhone.
  
• No oleophobic screen. I had forgotten how much those smudges bothered me. The iphone 3GS screen doesn't smudge nearly as much as other screens due to the oleophobic coating.
  
• Lack of accessories. I hear they're coming, but such a great infrastructure of iPhone accessories has been built up that it's hard to make me want to throw away all my docking bases, cables, car chargers, etc.
  
• Doesn't sync with iTunes
  
• It really is harder to zoom properly in the browser or any other app. It isn't just that pinch-to-zoom takes less time, but is more precise (you can zoom the exact amount you want to, whereas clicking the little "plus" button, one size is too small, the other too big)
  
• Can't play .wav attachments that have been emailed to me. My corporate phone system emails my attachments as .wav files and it awesome to be able to play my work messages without having to dial into my corporate system
  
• Google Voice's transcription sucks. Really. I want to like it in the worst way, it's just that after you've experienced YouMail's transcription, you never want to go back.
  
• Voice recognition worked OK, but there wasn't the ability to dictate a document, a-la Dragon Dictation on the iPhone. Punctuation threw it for a loop, things weren't properly capitalized, etc.
  
• Great push GMail notification, but couldn't turn off at night without third-party app. I like to sleep without being awakened by emails, but while leaving my phone turned on so that I can receive emergency calls.

Don't get the wrong impression by reading the list of complaints... it isn't as though I think the Nexus One is a lousy device at all. It's just that the iPhone is such an amazingly polished device, that when you compare, at least for me, I much preferred the iPhone experience. I'm partly writing this list down for my own sake, so I can review when a month from now I ask myself "so, what was so bad about the Nexus One again?" By contrast, the only part of the iPhone experience that I'm significantly frustrated with is AT&T's poor service. I'm really tired of dropping calls. Hopefully their iPhone exclusivity will end some day, and I'll be able to get one on the Verizon network.